TO NEW ERA EDITORS:

Visiting family in Lancaster, I chanced to read your newspaper, which featured a cartoon critical of President Obama. There is, of course, nothing wrong with criticizing anyone, especially politicians from the president on down.

I enjoy seeing photos of pols pleading guilty to corruption charges as they are led away to prison. They betrayed the public trust and deserve our criticism. Newspapers also have an obligation to the public to present the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When they print lies and distort the truth for their own political purposes, they too have betrayed the public trust and deserve our harshest criticism because they are or should be not only the keepers of the truth but the conduit for the truth for Americans too busy surviving to do the research.

The cartoon of President Obama blames him for all the misery America is experiencing now -- unemployment, the housing crisis, poverty, slow economic growth, downgraded credit ratings, the budget deficit, just about everything except puppy mills.

It was filled with so many distortions of the truth that I wouldn't be surprised if it had been created by Romney, Gingrich, Perry, Bachman or any of the other GOP candidates who seem to have a knack for distorting the truth, following in the footsteps of their hero, George Bush, the president who lied to Americans, swearing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction aimed at America and needed to be stopped whatever the cost in American dollars and lives. And as a result of Republicans deregulating the financial industry, we are now in the worst recession, housing slump and unemployment crisis since the Great Depression.

Your publishing this cartoon calling Obama, "The most arrogant president ever," has convinced me that you are probably responsible for the election of Republicans who have led America into war, poverty, unemployment, the housing crisis and the financial mess we Americans have to endure since Bush was elected.

More importantly, if you aided the arrogant Bush/Cheney administration in dragging us into war, you also have the blood of American soldiers and innocent civilians on your hands.

Hitler said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it as truth. Congratulations!

John Cappelletti

New York, N.Y.

(Editors' reply: The assertion that Bush "lied" about WMDs in Iraq is the letter writer's opinion. Bush has said only that failed intelligence led him, numerous advisers and many in Congress to conclude that Saddam Hussein had the weapons. As to deregulation, there is plenty of blame to go around. For example, the 1999 repeal of the 1930s-era Glass-Steagall Act requiring separation of commercial and investment banking, represented significant deregulation. But the repeal was signed by President Bill Clinton. Bush/Cheney "dragged" the U.S. into the Iraq war? As the war began in 2003, 69 percent of respondents to a CBS poll said the U.S. did the right thing by taking military action in Iraq. The letter writer's criticism of Bush/Cheney, it seems, has the benefit of hindsight.)